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What to Do with Gaps in Your Work Experience
Even when you've followed a relatively normal career path, listing your professional experience on your resumé is a difficult task. There are so many elements to consider: job titles, time frames, key responsibilities, transferable skills, etc. The process becomes even more difficult if you have gaps in your work history. Your potential employer will have no way of knowing why there is a three and a half year gap in your professional experience from your resumé alone. The hiring manager may wonder if you skipped over one or more jobs because they were unrelated to your career goals or represented significantly lower levels of responsibility, or whether you were unemployed altogether (whether because you couldn't find a job or because you temporarily left the workforce to be an unpaid caretaker for family or because of your own health issues). Any gaps in your employment history need to be documented appropriately, so don't deliberately leave out jobs simply because you'd rather forget them.
Here are a few general rules about gaps in your employment history:
- Any unaccounted time less than three months doesn't need to be explained. Having 60-90 days between jobs is not unusual, and often goes unnoticed within a resumé. However, any gaps longer than three months should be addressed in your cover letter or e-mail. Whether you had personal or professional reasons for not working, the gaps in your employment history need to be explained so that a potential employer isn't left to assume the worst.
- Be honest! We can't stress this matter enough. If you are forthright with your potential employer about your periods of unemployment or underemployment, you will not have to worry about what they will discover by checking your references or doing a background check. Nor will you get surprised with awkward questions about the white spaces in your job history during an interview.
- Donít omit months of your employment from the job listing. You are better off explaining the gaps in your resumé than trying to cover them up by only listing years.
- If you have held jobs that are not applicable to your career objective, list them on your resumé anyway, but be more brief in listing duties and responsibilities. Rather than create gaps in your resumé, explain why you held jobs outside of your field in your cover letter or in an email to your potential employer. Being willing to take a job others might dismiss as menial or unworthy of a professional person may actually create a better impression of a diligent person with a strong work ethic, while unexplained gaps are apt to lead employers to draw negative conclusions about both your industriousness and your honesty.
- Regardless of the reasons for the gaps in your professional history, it is important to keep the tone in your cover letter and your resumé positive. Do not sound apologetic -- life happens and there's no reason to be ashamed of taking time off of work. Be positive, and show your potential employer that you are able to overcome setbacks without losing focus on your career.
Periods of unemployment and underemployment are frustrating, both while they're happening and afterward when the gap in one's job history has to be dealt with. However, they don't need to be the end of the world. Most employers understand the old saying that life is what happens while you're busy making other plans, and are willing to make allowances for a gap if there is a good reason behind it. And we can help soften the blow by making a special effort to keep current in our field while we are involuntarily unemployed or underemployed. Here are some things to do that can help reassure a potential employer that you aren't a loser just because you have a hole in your job history:
- Apply some of your time and experience to volunteer positions, community projects, and consulting or freelance work.
- Take a class at a community college or a similar institution that improves your work-related skills and allows you to interact with people with similar professional backgrounds.
- Read about the latest developments in your field. Get a subscription to a professional publication/magazine, or get the newly published books that discuss changes or improvements in your profession.
Above all, be honest about the gaps in your job history and stay positive about the reasons for them. You can't change your work history, so do your best to show your employer you are the ideal candidate for the job by focusing on your achievements and the qualifications you derive from your education and experience.
